Harry Potter and the year of secrets
by hardcandi
Summary: A new girl comes to Hogwarts with a terrible secret, everything to play for, and everything hide. An alternative 5th year... RR
1. Default Chapter

Alright…. My first every story! Hopefully you like it, and if you don't, review, cause it won't get better if you don't! (you can review if you like too…)

Disclaimer: I wish I owned it, I don't.

Well. I had to re-start this story…. I kind of loaded a random chapter and forgot about it

A new girl walked into Potions class. The snickers from the Slytherins fell silent, as did the laughs from the griffindors. The only sound was the pad of the girl's feet as she walked slowly up the aisle. She reached the front, and stood still until Professor Snape pretended to notice her. The girl's golden eyes met Snapes, and she felt a sudden urge of hate. _No,_ she thought, _Not hate. Loathing._

"And why are you interrupting my class?" Snape hissed.

"Uh… I'm a new student here," the teenager said.

"Good God," said Snape, "you'll probably be worse than the rest of them. Go sit in the back next to Potty and his friends. Maybe you'll kill each other, and I won't have to see either of you again."

With that, he turned his heel and went to the blackboard. The girl made her way to the back of the room, trying to act like she wasn't hearing the whispers all around her.

Harry Potter looked up from playing tic tac toe with his best friend Ron on a scrap of parchment. His other best friend, Hermione, was reading a book under the table. Harry looked up after beating Ron in three turns to see a girl standing over them. She had long auburn hair that was streaked with gold, gold eyes, and a red mouth with a full lower lip. Her cheekbones gave her the look of one of those really thin models, and she looked about 5' 4''. She smiled, tentatively, revealing enormous dimples.

"Uh. Hi, that guy up there said I was supposed to sit by you?" she said softly.

Hermione looked up with interest. "Yeah," Hermione said, "sit next to me, I'm Hermione Granger." Harry and Ron just sat there, disgusted. "How annoying is _she,_" whispered Ron, "barging in like we're her bloody friends." Harry nodded back decisively, and they went on ignoring the new girl and playing tic tac toe.

The new girl, whose name was actually Dariene, spent the rest of the class in silence. She was used to it, and the potion they were making, a form of the Restorative Draught, was one she had been forced to make many times before. She didn't need to look up at the board, but added her ingredients quickly and methodically, finishing much before the rest of the class. So complete was her concentration that she did not notice Harry and Ron's disbelief, and Hermione's jealous stares. Dariene left her potion to boil when she was finished, and doodled on a scrap of parchment. Her musings were interrupted by the cold presence of the creepy professor. He hissed at her "Drawing, are we? I have been watching you this period, and you did not look at the instructions once. Perhaps you consider them… below you?"

"No," protested Dariene, "It's just that I-"

"Well, well, well, if you aren't just as arrogant as Potter. You two will either get on very well together, or rip each other to shreds."

"Probably the last," muttered Harry. He did not believe that anyone could be so… condescending, like she didn't even have to acknowledge their presence. A dark air of tension hung over the room as the class was, finally, dismissed.

Throughout the next weeks, Dariene continued to be an isolated island of gold eyes and hair. No one really talked about her, but everyone knew she was there, as she became known for being even smarter than Hermione. No one really knew anything else about her, or where she was from. For Ron and Harry's parts, they kept away from her, and bad mouthed after every lesson when they were forced to view her as an example.

"Stupid lesson," said Ron one night near Halloween, "All the teachers care about is that stupid girl. I'd not be surprised if they started snogging her or something, it's disgusting!"

"I know, and like she doesn't even bother to talk to us," groaned Harry.

"Have you lot considered that she might possibly be shy?" asked Hermione, "I've talked to her in a couple of my arithmancy classes, and she doesn't seem bad at all, she's just finding it hard to adjust where no one talks to her."

"Yeah. Well, no wonder she hasn't got anyone to talk to with that way she is…"

On and on Harry and Ron went, until the portrait hole suddenly opened. It was well past 10, and no students were supposed to be out. "Speak of the Devil," muttered Ron, as Dariene stumbled in.

cliffy, you _know _you love it

R+R or it can't get better!  
3 hardcandi


	2. Chapter 2

Alright…. My first every story! Hopefully you like it, and if you don't, review, cause it won't get better if you don't! (you can review if you like too…)

Disclaimer: I wish I owned it, I don't.

Well. I had to re-start this story…. I kind of loaded a random chapter and forgot about it

She didn't seem to notice them at first, and made for the girl's dormitory stairs by supporting herself on the back of a sofa heavily. She seemed to be about to pass out.

"Er. Dariene!" cried out Hermione, ignoring the boy's dirty looks. "Are you alright?"

At the sound of Hermione's voice, Dariene looked up, and crumpled to the floor as if in slow motion. She leaned back against the sofa, and her eyes fluttered shut, but she seemed to yank herself awake.

"Uh… yeah, I will be. I just got hit by a potion… Stupid Malfoy." She muttered. Ron and Harry immediately stopped pretending as if she wasn't in the room. The three friends got up and crowded around Dariene. "What happened?" Harry asked.

"Malfoy is brewing… a potion… The draught of the Sleeping Dead…" managed Dariene. Each word seemed to cost her a tremendous amount of effort, as if it was coming from a long, long way away. "I can't tell… more now… vapor makes you sleepy… have only limited immunity… tell in the morning." With a last sigh, Dariene gave up and fell into an unconscious sleep.

"Well." Said Ron. " That was interesting. What are we going to do now?"

"Get her to bed, obviously," Hermione snorted. "D'you think the locomotor spell would work on her?"

"We could just carry her up-oh wait, the staircase turns into a slide, doesn't it." Harry interrupted himself.

Hermione looked sheepish. "Actually, there's a way around that, but I'm not supposed to know, so don't use it, eh? If I walk behind you guys, the stairs will stay normal."

Harry and Ron stared at her, and Ron seemed about to ask when she had had the experience of taking a guy into her dormitory, but thought better of it. Harry, who had grown up over the summer, and now was the strongest of them, picked her up. "Wow. She needs to eat more or something. She can't weigh more than 90 pounds," Harry said.

Indeed, she did look fragile and almost angelic in the flickering, sinister firelight, an almost boneless bundle in Harry's arms. They got her into her bed without difficulty, and resolved to curb their curiosity until the morning.

Dariene woke with a slant of sunlight biting into the back of her eyes. With all of her effort, she tried to open her eyes. Failing that, she tried to remember why she was so groggy.

Flashback

Malfoy's cold voice rang out, "Well, Dariene, my dearest, in that room is something that I think you'll like… it is familiar to you, no doubt."

Dariene reached out a hand and cracked open the heavy oak door, and stepped inside. The first thing her eyes took in was a glowing cauldron, then the brown-ish vapors seeping from it. Her curiosity turned to panic as she viewed the potion she had been forced to brew many times before. Knowing her immunity only lasted so long, Dariene staggered from the room, and groped her way back to the common room, Malfoy's cold laughter ringing out behind her.

End flashback

Dariene gave a gasp from the memory and woke up. The bright Saturday morning light cut into the back of her head like a knife. As her vision returned, it was filled with Hermione's, Ron's, and Harry's curious faces. Dariene had to bite back a groan, knowing that the three would think she was even more of a stupid prat if she told them the story. Mentally preparing herself to spare them the details she said "Uhm. About last night-thanks for helping me. Now, excuse me, I need to go." Dariene swung her feet out of bed, cringing as she hit to stone floor, and stood up. And fell right back down onto the bed. "Shit" she swore, "I forgot how it makes you…" Dariene trailed off. Hermione spoke up. "Listen," she said, "I know we're not exactly friends, but you have to tell us, if not because of our help last night, then because Malfoy is our greatest enemy here, and we need to know what happened."

"No," said Dariene, "you don't because it won't make you all think I'm any less of an idiot, and I- uh, I-" Dariene had trouble coming up with another reason.

When faced with the prospect of dirt on Malfoy, Ron was pretty quick to come up with a response, "Please, tell us. We haven't been… quite as fair as we should have been… Maybe we should give you a chance…"

Jaime drew in a deep breath. "So. Last night, Malfoy told me he had something to show me, after din-"

"Dirty scum," interjected Ron, before he was silenced by a look from Hermione. Dariene went on.

"So he started taking me down to the dungeons, where I guess his lab is, but I don't really know."

"How can you not _know_," said Hermione skeptically.

"_Because_," said Dariene, annoyed, "he said he couldn't show me exactly where it was, so he had to knock me unconscious-"

Harry exploded. "Are you a total _IDIOT_?" he shouted. "What did you think? He was just going to knock you unconscious and be all nice and do nothing?"

Dariene turned red. "What, and you don't think I can protect myself? The DADA I know makes you look like a four year old! And besides…" Dariene whispered, "I thought he was nice…" she blushed

"Anyways," Dariene went on determinedly, ignoring Ron and Harry mouthing silently in frustration, "when I woke up, they told me to go into this door, and I did, and the first thing I saw was all this brown vapor floating towards me, which I knew was the Drought of the Sleeping Dead, so-" Dariene was cut off again, this time by Hermione.

"But how did you _know_?" Hermione asked, confused.

"Hm. Lets…er… I-er-just know," stuttered Dariene, before going on again, "Anyways, the Drought of the Sleeping Dead was originally developed for use by Healers, but its use was discontinued when it was determined that it had varied effects. It seemed to have the adverse effect of hitting good people harder than normal people, probably because of the Angel's bane in it-Good people," she said quickly, seeing Hermione open her mouth, "are people who are resistant to Dark Arts. Not just against them, but resistant to all Dark Arts. Like Harry. Anyways, you can gain an immunity of sorts if you are exposed to it, which means that you can fight it off longer. So when I saw the vapor in the room I left as quickly as possible, because I have some immunity, but when I go down, the Drought hits me harder than most people… I'll probably be all weak and disgusting like this for 2 days or so…"

Dariene was visibly tiring, and she laid her head back on the pillow. Harry said, quickly, before she fell asleep, "Listen, Sorry that we were so bad to you… We'll make it up to you…"

"No need…" murmured Dariene, "I just want to be friends with…you…guys…"

"HEY!" Ron noticed suddenly. "You're AMERICAN!"

Dariene fell back asleep with a soft smile on her face.

It was about 7:30 when Dariene finally reopened her eyes. Dariene's lips curved into a smile at the thought of her new friends as she swung her feet out of bed again, hoping that this time she would be able to hold herself up. Dariene waved her away and weaved her way towards the bathroom in the dorm. She came out 5 minutes later dressed in baggy green trackies and a beige off the shoulder shirt. Her hair, an intricate web of auburn, gold, and red was swept back off of her face, her gold eyes shimmered, and she looked better, sick as she was, than most girls did when they were trying. She looked exhausted still, but she bravely stumped down to the common room.

Her gold eyes scanned the boisterous common room tell she spied her newfound group of friends. Dariene sat down and inwardly congratulated herself on not wobbling, but she didn't let her emotion show on her face. She had long ago learned that once someone knows how you feel, they can exploit it very easily. Harry looked up quickly from his work and said, "Feeling alright?" before going back to working feverishly on his Potion's essay.

Dariene grimaced at the thought of all that work. It would be so much easier if she just…Inwardly smiling, Dari (as her friends would come to call her) brought her wand slowly to her golden temple, and quickly formed the thoughts she needed for her Potions essay in her mine. As easily as Dumbledore using his penseive, she brought away the thoughts that had attached themselves to her wand, and pointed the wand towards the parchment. Within 10 minutes, her essay was finished.

Even those 10 minutes, however, were taxing to her. She leaned back into her chair. Because her eyes were closed, she missed the admiring and jealous look Ron sent her. "Hey, American Girl! How d'you do that?"

Dari cracked an eye open. "I'll teach you." Ron immediately smiled, "But not tonight. I'm… ugh… so tired…" she said

"Well, then go back to bed!" said Hermione, impatiently. Harry grinned, knowing that Hermione was just tetchy because Dariene could do all these things she couldn't.

"Because I need to talk to you guys," said Dariene, managing to pull herself upright again.

"There's more to the Draught than what I told you last night. Malfoy brewing it… well… he's probably going to use it soon, because that potion has an extremely limited shelf life. Unfortunately… the major use for that Draught is to put large bodies of people out of commission so that the big bad boys can do their work. Since our next big gathering is tomorrow night… we need to be ready, since I suspect some dark wizards just might show up… Harry and I will need to fight them because we know the most about DADA… Hopefully, our efforts will be enough…"

She fell silent, _God_, she thought, _that was really exhausting… No more long speeches for me!_

"Uhm. Dariene?"

"Dari." Dari said.

"Ok. Dari? How do you know all this?" ventured Hermione.

"Eh. Experience." She said, and almost fell asleep.

"Come on, let me carry you upstairs again." Said Harry, being the only one to notice how tired she was.

He bent down to pick her up, and she flinched away. Fear and… revulsion?… were written on her face, as much as she tried to hide her emotions.

"No." she said harshly, and pushed herself up and out of the chair, stumbling back to bed.

_What was _that _about? _Harry wondered, _I thought she didn't hate me anymore…_

I'm not a fan of that chapter… it's sort of like a spring cleanin/basics chapter… some stuff I had to get out of the way

R+R or it can't get better!

(uhm… so no one's reviewed yet…. Ahhhhh! )


	3. Chapter 3

I have one reviewer! Thank you ever so much, **ushersboo**… and don't worry, she becomes very un-perfect later…

I hope _someone _else reviews… I'd sort of hate to have to take down the fic because no one read it…

Well, Ta! I hope there's someone out there who's reading this!

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Dari collapsed onto her bed, and wrenched the hangings around her with shaking, pale hands. She felt bad now, awful, about flinching from Harry, but… she just couldn't let him touch her. No one, ever again. Human touch had caused her so much pain…

Dari was half Finnish, giving her her red-gold hair and fair skin, and half French, from where she got her fine bones and ultra-high cheekbones. However, she didn't know anything about either culture as Voldemort killed her parents personally, when she was 13 weeks old. She survived the attack, not through an amazing feat, as Harry Potter, the boy who lived, had, but because for some reason, Voldemort had found her too important to kill. She would regret this for the next 15 years of her life.

Dari drifted into deeper and darker thoughts. The last 15 years had been a maze of pain and abuse. She had endured everything, punishments that would kill normal humans, but her body would not grant her respite and let her die. Night after night, as she lay on the floor wherever she was allowed, Dari would wish to die, the tears that she never let anyone see leaking out silently from behind long lashes.

She broke out of her reverie to realize the same was true now. Huge tears tracked their way across her cheeks to meet and be absorbed by her pillow. Dari stiffened. She would not cry. Crying was weak, and besides-no one even wanted or cared to see her cry. With that bitterness, she fell asleep again, to drift through the seas of dreamlessness until 5 p.m. the next day (Sunday)

Sunday afternoon woke her with the splendor of a dorm full of girls who are preparing for a feast (Halloween) and trying to finish homework at the same time. Gingerly, her felt her face, and wiped the saltiness from her eyes. Looking down at her outfit, she decided that she should probably be wearing something more comfortable if she was to go off fighting dark wizards. With a little effort, hoping not to expend too much energy, Dari changed her outfit into a black, long sleeved shirt and full, stretchy, olive pants. Yawning, she pushed back her hangings and stretched. Making sure she had her wand, she began to make her way towards the great Hall.

On the way though, she was brought up short by the sound of familiar voices in an abandoned classroom along a deserted corridor.

"Yeah, and what's this about her having immunity to that Draughty thing? What, did her parents feed it to her in place of baby formula?" said a voice that was doing a great imitation of Ron's

_If only you knew_, thought Dari, _though, on the other hand, I'll never tell…_

A voice that sounded uncannily like Hermione's intoned shrilly, "She could be evil! How else would she know all of this-this-dark magic! She could just want his help fighting tonight to lure him into a trap!"

"Hermione." Harry's light voice said, "Calm down. If she was evil, why would she be helping me fight whoever shows up tonight? Anyways, look, Sirius's family is evil, and he's…" _Thattaboy, sticking up for me_, thought Dari, grimly, _Like I need _his _help!_

Still, Dari allowed herself the luxury of a small smile as she walked away from the conversation. However, her satisfaction in Harry did not last as she mulled over Hermione and Ron's points. Her normally liquid-gold eyes turned to bubbling lava as she internally raged, _As if any of them know GOOD! What have they done to prove their worth? They don't even know what goodness and strength IS! If they knew…_ 'If they knew, they'd never talk to you again…" said a small voice in the back of her head, but her eyes were still bubbling when Harry showed up in the front hall a little later. She was waiting for him, and she prided herself on keeping her anger out of her voice as she bid Ron and Hermione goodbye.

She turned to Harry, and said, "We should probably wait bye the front doors for them," and seeing the fear in Harry's green eyes she said, "Hey, don't worry, we can do this!"

"I wasn't _worrying_," lied Harry.

_Liar_, thought Dari

They stood in silence for about 10 minutes, Dari standing a little in front and to the left of Harry. Both were dressed to battle, Harry in baggy jeans and a black shirt. Dari was calming herself, knowing a little of what to come, and she was ready when the door swung open as silently as silk. To Harry, however, it seemed that his whole world was speeding up, as he panicked.

A tall bald wizard with cold, colorless eyes stepped into Hogwarts. He wore a long black cloak, fastened with a silver brooch in the shape of a Dark Mark. Dari drew in a breath, and he thought he heard something that sounded like "…Dubar…" In the tall man's hand was a small brown vial, and seeing that, Dari hissed to Harry, "Get that vial from him, but _don't break it!_"

The man pretended to notice them for the first time, and laughed, high and cold. Before he could get his bearings, Harry said "Accio Vial!" and the sinister brown container started flying towards him. The tall man, who knew something of Dari, expected this from one of them, and quickly said "Distingratus" and the vial fell apart in mid air. The man shrugged, it didn't matter. He was planning to break it anyways.

"Shit" Harry heard Dari say distinctively. "More Draught." (a/n: Because the Draught works to suppress the powers of good, a man as evil as Dubar would be pretty much unaffected)

The bald wizard turned his attention to Dari and Harry tumbled to the ground as the potion began its work. "So, We meet again…" said the man, and the word 'again' echoed over and over in Harry's head as he blacked out. Dari thought _Great. A whole lot of help _he _was!_ and turned to face the man.

"Dubar," she said. "A dubious honor of seeing you again, and hopefully for the last time."

"Yes, because next time you'll be dead!" the man said, as he muttered something. Instantly, a long whip of fire sprouted from his wand. Before Dari had time to react, he cracked it at her, the long chain of fire wrapping around her forearm. Instantly, the sleeve of her shirt burned away, and Dari hissed "Aqueous" and put out the flame. At her word, the jet of water turned to a jet of ice, and she aimed it at Harry, to protect him from Dubar's devilry. She turned it on Dubar, and listened as he screamed when the cold hit his skin. A frozen block of ice, he wasn't much danger, and she was debating banishing him, when footsteps sounded behind her. She quickly spun, ready for battle, wand out, before she noticed it was Dumbledore.

All the adrenaline fled her bloodstream, and immediately she felt the strain of staying awake against the Draught of the Sleeping dead. Seeing the puddle of vile liquid behind her, she gasped "Evanesco" and it disappeared. Dari looked down at her wand hand, and as soon as she caught sight of the burn, the agony set in. Struggling against spasms of pain as her skin blistered and boiled, Dari fell to her knees and passed out.

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well, I hope someone liked it…

see the gorgeous blue-purple button below? I know you want to click and review…


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